Századok – 2015

2015 / 2. szám - Feld István: A magánvárak építésének kezdetei a középkori Magyarországon a régészeti források tükrében. II.

MAGÁNVÁRAK ÉPÍTÉSÉNEK KEZDETEI A KÖZÉPKORI MAGYARORSZÁGON 379

19.kép Ugróc (Placek-Bóna 2007)

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF PRIVATE CASTLES IN MEDIEVAL HUNGARY IN THE MIRROR OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE II.

by Feld István (Summary)

The first part of this study examined the chronological, functional and terminological problems of those private castles which were constructed in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary between the late 12th and the early 14th centuries. The second part aims at a complex investigation of the components of the castle as a built object, still based on the results of archaeological research, but emphatically from a historical perspective.

As for the defensive structures of fortifications, it has to be emphasised that the existence of ramparts consisting of a wooden structure filled with earth, built on the interior side of protective ditches, frequently supposed in the previous scholarship, cannot be sustained in the case these private strongholds; such ramparts were the exclusive feature of the central places created by the ruler. On the other hand, the earth extracted in the course of digging the ditch was regularly used for the construction of a defensive line without an internal structure on the exterior side of the ditch, misleadingly also referred to as a rampart. Yet the interior side of the ditch or the edges of the defended area were sometimes not only protected by a stone castle wall - fortifications protected by a mere ditch were fairly rare - but, as showed by the excavations, also by a palisade, consisting of a row of wooden piles dug in at regular intervals and backed by clay luting. The name applied to this kind of construction is far from unequivocal in the scholarship, however. In this respect it has to be stressed that wood as a material for construction played an important role in the erection of castles